Order your O2 phone by 10pm, get it next day!

He sent me a chocolate bar together with the slightly mysterious note you see above.

As you can see on the wrapper, the text on the chocolate bar reads:

This doesn’t have to last you two years. Just like a phone. Get a new one whenever you like with O2 Refresh.

A smart way to draw attention!

I’m a big, big fan of O2’s Refresh. If you recall, that’s where they separate line rental from the cost of the mobile phone. If you really don’t like committing to a 24-month contract, then Refresh is definitely for you. Agree the line rental package you’d like and that works like normal. However, you can then change your phone as often as you wish. You’ll need to pay it off before swapping but there’s a lot of possibilities around — you could try and sell it, recycle it or even see what O2 would give you for the device. The key point is you won’t get nailed for the full cost of a contract if you’d like to change.

O2 launched Refresh about a year ago and since then has been getting excellent feedback. Anecdotally whenever I’ve been talking to O2 store employees, Refresh is regularly cited as a Godsend when dealing with fractious customers like me who want everything now-now-now.

If you’re keen to try it out, you need to make sure you’re on the right price plan — all the company’s new monthly contracts are “Refresh enabled”.

Here’s a practical example with the Samsung Galaxy S5. Let’s say you go for their £38 line rental. That (see the red box I highlighted?) is broken down as £18 for actual airtime and £20 for the phone.

This means you’re on the hook for £480 for the Galaxy S5. If, 10 months from now you decide you’d like the Galaxy S6 (as it should probably have launched by then) you’ll have paid off £200 (£20/month x 10) and therefore the balance will be £280. Let’s assume you can use O2 Recycle to get…. £190 back. (That’s me being realistic… today you’d get about £270 for a recycled S5). So in this example, you’d had to stump up £90 to call it quits and get a new phone. I think Refresh is a good idea even if you end up keeping your phone for 24 months. I like everyone to have the flexibility to change.

Order by 10pm, get it next day

The other piece of news, delivered by chocolate bar — seriously, this is the way to go for press releases in the future, stick it all on a chocolate bar wrapper — is that O2 is upping the bar, yet again.

Logistics Managers all across the industry will be gnashing their teeth when they see that O2 has now launched guaranteed next day delivery on all orders placed before 10pm. Good.

The amount of times I’ve been ordering phones from operators and had the deflating answer from the call centre along the lines of, “Oh yeah sorry it’s gone 4pm so … yeah… you’ll get the phone in two days time.”

Arrrgh.

O2’s customer services is open until 9pm during the week so you’ll definitely meet the cut-off no problem if you’re ordering by phone. Otherwise, if you place your online order before 10pm, expect it to arrive within about 10-12 hours (assuming it’s delivered from about 8am-10am onwards). That is pretty smart.

It’s a good challenge for the rest of the industry and it will no doubt add to the net promoter scores for O2 customers. It also just makes sense in today’s now-today-right-now culture.

Back to the chocolate bar. I arrived home at about 9pm this evening and then fumbled for my phone to quickly get an email off to JP prior to the 10pm cut off as instructed. I admit to eating some of the bar too. See the photo evidence below. I left a substantial amount for my wife though!